Category: Thoughts

I went along yesterday to the Open Knowledge Forum meeting on Open Geodata in London. Overall I was very impressed by the debate, apart from a couple of exceptions we seem to be moving the arguement away from the simple “free data good, charging for data bad” mantra – in particular Roger Longhorns’ presentation was a well balanced review of the availability of geodata around the word and the various models used to fund it. Hopefully this along with the other presentations will be posted on the web in due course.

The process of community-based efforts to capture copyright free geodata is slowly beginning, it will be an uphill struggle as the capture and maintenance of Geodata is expensive, but then again so is the development of Operating Systems.

No I don’t see a Linux like Mastermap appearing anytime soon, but a national street map could be possible within a couple of years.

Written and submitted from the BMI lounge at Dublin Airport, using a free 802.11 network.

No surprises but the 1,650 first year students at Duke University supplied with a ‘free” iPod to help with their studies are not using them as hoped for to enhance their academic studies – no they are using them to listen to music – shock !! A few language students are using them to play back foreign vocab, but it is estimated less than 2% of courses have even attempted to integrate iPod’s into their lecture programmes.

A cheap stunt to entice students to the university then.. how soon will UK universites follow, my old place of work Kingston University like all universites will have to compete increasingly for its students, is it just a matter of time?

There was a time when having a GIS course was enough 🙂

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.